Clash Royale First Look: Graveyard

The Ice Golem finally arrived yesterday (and even has its own intro video!), which also means the fourth and final new card has now also been revealed: Graveyard! This Legendary spell may seem familiar to Clash of Clan players, but would probably leave Royale players scratching their heads from reading its description… so what exactly is it, and how’s it’ going to impact the game?

What is it?

Imagine Poison. But instead of dealing damage and slowing down troops within its radius, this spell produced Skeletons in random locations within the radius for a duration of 10 seconds! At first glance this doesn’t seem like much: at a spawn speed of 0.5 sec, that means only 20 Skeletons will be spawned in total right? That’s even 1 less Skeleton than good ol’ Skeleton Army, which costs 1 Elixir less!

But there are 2 major differences that makes Graveyard a much more dangerous card than Skeleton Army: First off, you can deploy Graveyard ANYWHERE in the Arena (ie. directly on a Crown Tower!). Played by itself, the weak Skeletons won’t do any damage to the Crown Tower; but play this when you have other attacking troops about to close in on your opponent’s Tower (ie. Minion Horde, Mini P.E.K.K.A.), and the Graveyard will make it verrrry difficult for your opponent’s Tower or defending troops to lock onto the attackers they want to target. Second, while Skeleton Army is very easy to counter with Arrows or Zap as all troops are summoned at once, Graveyard is pretty much impossible to counter as troops are spawned one-by-one within the 10 second duration. Defending against the Graveyard, you can only hope that your opponent mistimed/misplayed the spell so that your Tower and troops can take out the Skeletons without suffering too much damage. Still confused? Watch the spell in action in the gif below (original source here):

Aside from Skeleton Army (which we already made some comparisons above), there really isn’t another card that works like Graveyard! Tombstone produced Skeletons for less Elixir (3 v.s. 5), but at a much slower rate (2.5 secs v.s. 0.5 sec) and can be destroyed. Also, Graveyard (much like the Miner) is a waste to deploy on defense, as you won’t be getting a good Elixir trade by spawning your Skeletons on defense. Using the spell to defend against P.E.K.K.A. or Prince may be the only exception I can think of.

What is it good for?

We briefly alluded to this already, but this spell is great when paired up with other attacking troops. The ability to spawn Skeletons anywhere almost instantly will catch your opponent off guard, and redirect their defense targeting, allowing your attacking troops to survive en route to dealing damage to your opponent’s tower. And you also can not underestimate the Skeleton’s ability to dish out damage when your opponent’s defense is locked onto your tank (such as Giant or Golem): within a matter of seconds, you will have a dozen-or-so Skeletons dishing instant damage on your opponent’s troops and Tower!

How do you stop it?

We did say that Graveyard is almost impossible to stop, BUT playing your Poison on the same radius as Graveyard should pretty much take out any spawning Skeletons before they are able to dish out any damage (they may still distract your defense targeting though). The biggest disadvantage for Graveyard is its Elixir cost: the attack combos sound great, but while the Miner (another card that you can throw in as an instant distraction on offense) costs only 3-Elixir, Graveyard costs 5. If you know your opponent’s running Graveyard, just make sure you don’t fall too far behind on your Elixir trades so you can sufficiently deploy enough troops/spells on defense.

How is this going to change the meta?

While Graveyard is a fancy card that can wreak havoc when played correctly, its Elixir cost is a little too high as a situational offense-only spell. Players can probably get better value on offense through spells such as Poison, Freeze, or even Rage. Perhaps some skilled players will find ways to utilize Graveyard in some fancy new decks, but I personally can’t see the card making as big an impact on the current meta as the other 3 new cards that were released this cycle (Inferno Dragon, Mega Minion, Ice Golem).